Maher Arar

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Maher Arar (Arabic: ماهر عرار‎; born 1970 in Syria) is a Canadian software engineer. On September 26, 2002, during a stopover in New York en route from Tunis to Montreal, Arar was detained by the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service who may have been acting upon false and misleading information supplied by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police^[1] . Despite carrying a Canadian passport, he was deported to Syria in accordance with a U.S. policy known as "extraordinary rendition."^[2] Arar was held in solitary confinement in a Syrian prison where he was regularly tortured for almost a year, until his eventual release and return to Canada in October 2003.^[3]

Maher Arar's case reached new heights of controversy after Juliet O'Neill wrote an article in the Ottawa Citizen on November 08, 2003, boasting information leaked to her from an unknown security source, possibily within the RCMP. The secret documents provided by her source suggested Arar was a trained member of an al Qaeda terrorist cell. The RCMP latter raided O'Neill's house pursuant to search warrants it had obtained to investigate the leak.^[4] The raid was widely denounced and lead to the initiation of a public inquiry to investigate Arar's case.

The episode strained Canada-U.S. relations and eventually resulted in the creation of a public inquiry in Canada "into the actions of Canadian officials dealing with the deportation and detention"of Arar^[5] . The commission's final report cleared Arar's name and was sharply critical of the RCMP, other Canadian government departments and the United States' treatment of Arar. The United Statesdid not participate in the inquiry and it refuses to disclose whether Mr. Arar is still on its no-fly list.^[6] Furthermore, the Bush Administration maintains that Arar's removal to Syria was legal and was not a case of extraordinary rendition. Human rights groups dispute this.^[7]

Maher Arar's ordeal has remained a very controversial issue and its fallout continues to have reprecussions in Canadian politics. It has particularly raised numerous questions yet to be answered concerning the role of various Government ministers and officials in this case. The latest casualty from the case is RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli, who has resigned over contradictions in his testimony to the House of Commons Committee on Public Safety and National Security with respect to what he knew at the time and what he told government ministers.^[8]

1 Early life and career
2 Detention and deportation
3 Imprisonment
4 Release and subsequent controversy
5 Official investigations into Arar's case
6 US embassy statements
7 US Attorney General Gonzales's response to the Arar inquiry
8 Canada's formal protest to the USA
9 See also
10 References
11 External links

[edit] Early life and career

Arar, who holds both Canadian and Syrian citizenship, moved to Canada at the age of 17 in 1988 to avoid mandatory military service.

Arar earned a bachelor's degree in computer engineering from McGill University and a master's degree from the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (a branch of the Université du Québec) in Montreal. At the time of his deportation Arar was employed in Ottawa as a telecommunications engineer. He is married to Monia Mazigh, who has a Ph.D. in finance from McGill. They have two young children: Barâa and Houd.

Arar speaks French, English and Arabic.

[edit] Detention and deportation

On September 26, 2002, Arar was returning to Montreal from a family vacation in Tunisia. During a stopover at JFK Airport he was detained by United States immigration officials. They claimed that Arar was an associate of Abdullah Almalki, a Syrian-born Ottawa man whom they suspected of having links to the al-Qaeda terror organization, and they therefore suspected Arar of being an al-Qaeda member himself. When Arar protested that he only had a casual relationship with Almalki (having once worked with Almalki's brother at an Ottawa high-tech firm), the officials produced a copy of Arar's 1997 rental lease which Almalki had co-signed. The fact that US officials had a Canadian document in their possession was later widely interpreted as evidence of the participation by Canadian authorities in Arar's detention.

He was deported to Syria on October 7 or 8. The Canadian government was notified on October 10, 2002 and Arar was later discovered to be in the Far'Falastin detention center, near Damascus, Syria.

The deportation was condemned by the Canadian government and by groups such as Amnesty International. On October 29, 2002, the Canadian foreign affairs department issued a travel advisory strongly cautioning Canadians born in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya and Sudan against travel to the United States for any reason. The advisory prompted US conservative Pat Buchanan to describe Canada as "Soviet Canuckistan".^{[citation needed]}

The American ambassador to Canada, Paul Cellucci, later told Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham that all Canadian passport holders would be treated equally. In November 2002, Canadian privacy commissioner George Radwanski recommended that birthplace information be removed from all Canadian passports, in part because of fears of profiling in the United States and other countries. The recommendation was not implemented, but Canadian passport regulations already allowed citizens to request that this field be left blank.

[edit] Imprisonment

Arar was imprisoned in Syria for 10 ½ months, during which time he claims he was tortured and forced to sign a false confession which purported that he had trained in Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. The Canadian government accepts Arar's allegations as fact, and the Commission of Inquiry agreed that he had been tortured. However, the United States Attorney General has stated that he has seen no evidence other than Arar's own account that Arar was tortured. Arar says that he was kept in a 3-foot by 6-foot, dark, underground cell, beaten and threatened with electrocution. He was further traumatized by overhearing other prisoners being tortured. He had some visits from diplomatic officials, but he did not tell them that he was being tortured until their seventh visit, after which conditions improved for him. His explanation for waiting was that his jailers were in the room during the visits and that they had warned him beforehand not to discuss his treatment or he would be punished.

Arar's wife, Monia Mazigh, conducted an active campaign in Canada to secure his release.

[edit] Release and subsequent controversy

Arar was released on October 5, 2003, 374 days after his deportation to Syria. He returned to Canada, reuniting with his wife and children.

After Arar's release, the controversy continued over his treatment by the US and over the role that Canadian police and government officials may have played in his deportation and interrogation. The United States claimed that the RCMP had provided them with a list of suspicious persons that included Mr. Arar.^[9] It was also discovered that Canadian consular officials knew that Arar was in custody in the United States but did not believe that he would be deported. The Canadian government maintains that the decision to deport Arar to Syria was made by American officials alone.

The Canadian New Democratic Party continued to push for a full judicial inquiry. In December 2003, Ambassador Paul Cellucci said that American domestic security would trump respect of Canadian citizenship and that the United States would not change its policy on deportations to third countries.^[10] Prime Minister Paul Martin replied by demanding that Canadian passports be respected.^[11]

In January 2004, Arar announced that he would be suing then American Attorney-General John Ashcroft over his treatment,^[12] but the US government invoked the rarely-used State Secrets Privilege in a motion to dismiss the suit. The government claimed that to go forward in an open court would jeopardize the United States' intelligence, foreign policy, and national security interests.

On January 21, 2004, the RCMP searched the residence of Ottawa Citizen journalist, Juliet O'Neill as part of a related investigation into leaks from security sources.^[13]^[14] On November 12, 2004, an Ottawa judge ruled that the RCMP must reveal much of the information that was used to justify the search. The material was sealed by a justice of the peace at the request of the police.

At a summit meeting in Monterrey, Mexico, on January 13, 2004 Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin and U.S. President George Bush reached an agreement, sometimes referred to as the Monterrey Accord, which obliged the United States to notify Canada before deporting a Canadian citizen to a third country. However, according to a news story in the Toronto Globe and Mail, Stephen Yale-Loehr, lawyer and adjunct professor of immigration and asylum law at Cornell University told the Arar inquiry "the Canada-U.S. agreement struck...to prevent a recurrence of the Arar affair is ineffective and legally unenforceable."^[15]

Arar's wife, Monia Mazigh, ran unsuccessfully as the NDP candidate in the Ottawa South riding in the 2004 federal election.

TIME magazine chose Arar as Canadian Newsmaker of the Year for 2004.

On February 16, 2006, Brooklyn District Court Judge David Trager dismissed Arar's lawsuit against members of the George W. Bush administration.^[16] Although Trager discounted legal arguments by the defendants, he based his decision on national security grounds, not legal reasons.

On October 18, 2006, Maher Arar and the Center for Constitutional Rights were honoured with the Institute for Policy Studies Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award, in recognition of the struggle to clear his name and draw attention to American abuses of human rights in dealing with terrorist suspects^[17].

Jimmy Carter, former President of the United States, discusses Arar sympathetically in his bestselling 2005 book Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis. Amy Goodman, host of the radio program Democracy Now!, and her brother David Goodman write about Maher Arar in their 2006 book, Static.

[edit] Official investigations into Arar's case

[edit] Garvie report

On September 25, 2004, the results of an internal RCMP investigation by RCMP Chief Superintendent Brian Garvie were published. Though the version released to the public was censored, the Garvie report documented several instances of impropriety by the RCMP in the Arar case. Among its revelations were that the RCMP was responsible for giving American authorities sensitive information on Arar with no attached provisos about how this information might be used. Also, Richard Roy, the RCMP liaison officer with the Department of Foreign Affairs, may have known of the plan of deporting Arar to Syria but did not contact his supervisors. Additionally, Deputy RCMP Commissioner Garry Loeppky lobbied hard, in the spring of 2003, to convince his government not to claim in a letter to Syria, that it "had no evidence Arar was involved in any terrorist activities" because Arar "remained a person of great interest."

In response to the Garvie report, Arar said that the report was "just the starting point to find out the truth about what happened to me" and that it "exposes the fact that the government was misleading the public when they said Canada had nothing to do with sending me to Syria."

[edit] Public inquiry

On February 5, 2004, the Canadian government established a commission of inquiry under Dennis O'Connor, Associate Chief Justice of Ontario to investigate and report on the actions of Canadian officials.

On June 14, 2005, Franco Pillarella, Canadian ambassador to Syria at the time of Arar's deportation, said that at the time he had no reason to believe Arar had been badly treated, and in general had no reason to conclusively believe that Syria engaged in routine torture. These statements prompted widespread incredulity in the Canadian media, and former Canadian UN ambassador responded to Pillarella asserting that Syria's human rights abuses were well known and well documented by many sources.

On September 14, 2005, the O'Connor commission concluded public hearings after testimony from 85 witnesses. The US ambassador at the time of the incident, Paul Cellucci, refused to testify.

On October 27, 2005 a fact-finder appointed by the Arar inquiry released a report saying that he believed Arar was tortured in Syria. He said that Arar had recovered well physically but was still suffering from psychological problems caused by his mistreatment.

The final report, released on September 18, 2006, categorically states that there is no evidence linking Arar to terrorist activity, that the RCMP passed false information on to US authorities, and that the RCMP leaked untrue information to damage his reputation. The report also confirms that he was tortured while in Syria. ^[18]

[edit] RCMP Apology

On September 28, 2006, RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli issued a carefully worded public apology to Arar and his family during the House of Commons committee on public safety and national security:

Mr. Arar, I wish to take this opportunity to express publicly to you and to your wife and to your children how truly sorry I am for whatever part the actions of the RCMP may have contributed to the terrible injustices that you experienced and the pain that you and your family endured. ^[19]

Arar thanked Commissioner Zaccardelli for his apology but lamented the lack of concrete disciplinary action against those individuals whose actions led to his detention and subsequent torture. ^[20] Zaccardelli later resigned as RCMP commissioner because of this case.

[edit] US embassy statements

Robert H. Tuttle, the US ambassador to Britain told the BBC on December 22, 2005:

"I don't think there is any evidence that there have been any renditions carried out in the country of Syria. There is no evidence of that. And I think we have to take what the secretary Condoleezza Rice says at face value. It is something very important, it is done very carefully and she has said we do not authorise, condone torture in any way, shape or form."

This statement was amended the very next day by a U.S. embassy spokeswoman who stated that the embassy "recognised that there had been a media report of a rendition to Syria but reiterated that the United States is not in a position to comment on specific allegations of intelligence activities that appear in the press". ^[21]

[edit] US Attorney General Gonzales's response to the Arar inquiry

On September 19, 2006 US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales denied any wrongdoing on the part of the USA in Arar's transportation to Syria.^[22] During a press conference Gonzales said:^[23]

"Well, we were not responsible for his removal to Syria, I'm not aware that he was tortured, and I haven't read the Commission report. Mr. Arar was deported under our immigration laws. He was initially detained because his name appeared on terrorist lists, and he was deported according to our laws.

"Some people have characterized his removal as a rendition. That is not what happened here. It was a deportation. And even if it were a rendition, we understand as a government what our obligations are with respect to anyone who is rendered by this government to another country, and that is that we seek to satisfy ourselves that they will not be tortured. And we do that in every case. And if in fact he had been rendered to Syria, we would have sought those same kind of assurances, as we do in every case."

On September 20, 2006 Charles Miller, a DoJ spokesmen, said Gonzales had merely been trying to clarify that deportations were no longer the responsibility of the Department of Justice, but were now the responsibility of the Department of Homeland Security.^[24]

[edit] Canada's formal protest to the USA

During a telephone conversation on October 6, 2006, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper notifed U.S. President George W. Bush that Canada intended to lodge a formal protest over U.S. treatment of Arar. The notification was later followed by a letter of protest sent from Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Peter MacKay to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.^[25] Harper told reporters that Canada wants "the United States government [to] come clean with its version of events, to acknowledge... the deficiencies and inappropriate conduct that occurred in this case, particularly vis-a-vis its relationship with the Canadian government." In particular, Canada wants United States assurances, said Harper, that "these kinds of incidents will not be repeated in the future."^[26]